Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I’m wondering if anyone has had luck farming crawdad in a tank instead of in a pond and if so, how many one could expect to grow out in a 250 gallon tank? Also any info that you have on what to feed them and feed conversion ratios to grow them out would be helpful. We’d like to raise enough for ourselves and to sell at the local farmers market but aren’t really sure how many we can grow out without them eating each other.

So I did a Google search and found this document http://fisheries.tamu.edu/files/2013/09/Crawfish-Production-Manual.pdf, then spent about 3 minutes reading. It sounds like it might be possible to grow out crawfish in a tank, but successful breeding requires them burrowing into soil, etc. So while engineering solutions can be found for almost any problem, the breeding might be difficult.

If I was trying it I think I would make some sort of mesh rack that gives each crawfish space to eat and grow, but prevents them from harming each other. If they are like Redclaw crayfish they can be cannibalistic so must be separated if in close proximity.

So if I had a rack with 16 spaces I would put a crawfish in every other space. Then I would stack another rack on top and put crawfish in the alternating spaces so they are well separated. In theory you could stack several racks to get a good population.

However, how you assure that each space has food I do not know. With sinking feed it would just go through the racks to the bottom of the tank.

Anyway, I bet with a couple of hours of research on your own you could get a good idea of how to get started,